2010-01-25

WASHINGTON, DC - The Haiti situation has certainly gotten a large and deserved share of national and international attention. I even watched a bit of the Clooney telethon, and in fact donated during that time - via the web, of course, I didn't want to risk calling in, having John Cusack answer my call, and end up berating him regarding his recent film choices.

I always remind myself at times like these, that it's just a dumb accident of the cosmos that I was born in New Jersey and not someplace like Haiti and that I have a cushy life because of this, that it's just luck that I'm not one of the tens of thousands of sudden orphans.

But I have noticed - there seems to be a lot more attention on addressing the situation in Haiti than I've seen for other recent earthquakes similar casualty counts.

An earthquake in Iran in 2003 killed 31,000 people. All I remember about that quake was that Iran refused help from Israel.

Earthquakes in Pakistan in 2005 and China in 2008 each killed about 87,000 people.

I don't remember a massive all-media response or celebrity-studded telethons tied to those quakes.

There was the 2004 quake and subsequent tsunami in Indonesia, and I do remember that getting a good amount of attention.

But things have gotten very acute for this Haiti situation. Is it because the casualty count is much higher relative to the population size of the country than the other incidents? Something else? I don't know.